In Time con't
by 123laura3215
Summary: Fooled you. Abel's totally not dead. Yay! Well actually, I never really planned on that happening anyways because it's Abel and just no. (Sorry, I didn't know about the whole story being complete incomplete business, this site is insane: CONFUSION?)
1. Chapter 1

When I was younger, my mother would point out the constellations to me and tell their tales until the stars listened and changed their formation to weave the tapestry of her words. There's Hercules, battling hydra. That there? The big dipper. Southern Cross. Pisces, her star sign. Libra, mine. I always found it strange that in the world that ignored stars, tried to replace them, the item that represented me was used to weigh the value of my mother.

_"Cain! Cain, wait." _

Never thought I'd end up hating fucking Hercules so much. Never thought anything would frighten me more than the thought of a giant snake with regenerating heads until I saw a man blown into a million pieces and drift soundly through zero gravity.

_"Fuck off, Praxis"_

_"I know we don't really get along but, Abel... saved my life. He's a great pilot. A great person."_

_"I said fuck off. I don't want to hear how fucking upset you are that there's no one to suck you off anymore."_

What the sky actually is: a never ending battlefield in a never ending war. How do you back your enemy into a corner if there's no fucking corner to begin with?

_"Cain..."_

Back home there was a merry-go-round we used to get on and spin around in to have that feeling of being weightless, of the world spinning so fast time becomes meaningless and the clocks forget their promises to get you places on time; instead, they surrender their insides and turn backwards or forwards or just nowhere at all and the stars aren't constellations or stories or a fucking eternal battle between one man and an impossible enemy.

_"Cain, he's not dead"_

And then, suddenly, it comes to a hault and you climb off it and fight the urge to throw up not with dizziness but with relief that you're back on solid ground.

_"What? What the fuck did you say?"_

_"Abel. He's not dead."_

Doesn't work though. You throw up every time because there's finally something to hold you up. Thank fuck.

_"You better not be fucking lyi-"_

_"No. He's alive."_

_"Jesus, fuck. Fucking hell."_

Back home in the colonies, the stars are specks of light in an otherwise empty void.

_"Your task names are Cain, and Abel..."_

Up here, they're just giant balls of gas whose only purpose is to make you wish that your last drink wasn't highly flammable. But you run to them anyways, as fast as you can because we're all just moths to a flame in the end, unable to resist the burn.

_"ABEL!"_


	2. Chapter 2

**Abel POV**

You there. Yeah, you. Let me tell you something.

Dying? It sucks.

Way too much pain for this to be heaven, though guess it makes sense I'd end up in hell after helping kill so many. Seems a bit unfair though. I always prayed for Jesus. Maybe it was that one time I got a hard on staring at his painting in the art gallery. Or maybe it's what I did after the gallery.

_"ABEL!"_

Oh no. No no no, no.

_"Let me in!"_

No way. I died so Cain wouldn't have to, took his place. I turned the ship around! I took the bullet, there's no way that Cain died too.

_"Let me in you asshole!"_

I must be dreaming. There didn't used to be this much pain in dreaming, either.

_"I don't give two shits what your fucking bullshit doctor has to say, he's MY navigator, let me the fuck in right now or I'll-"_

I suppose it's some sort of sick joke the universe is playing on me here, like only once I was dead would Cain actually care about wanting to see me once he wasn't forced to be my partner. Or maybe this is my punishment. Maybe I'll be forced to spread my legs for the rest of eternity and let myself be fucked rough forever. If that is the case then I've clearly been giving the universe way too much credit for it's intelligence.

_"Abel, wake the fuck up you idiot. Open your fucking eyes."_

_"Stop shaking him, moron! We barely know what kind of physical condition he's in, let alone what happened to his head, you could cause some serious damage!"_

Are there earthquakes in the afterlife?

_"Fuck off. Abel, I'll fucking kill you if you fucked up your brain."_

Suddenly I'm too warm and someone's gripping my shoulders too hard and everything hurts and not again, it can't be Monday already -

_"Iduhewaunskuhh"_

_"Holy crap. Shit, shitshitshit. Abel."_

_"We need some nurses in here! You, fighter, you need to leave."_

Nurses? No. Mum. You quit your job ages ago. Remember?

_"I don wanna gotuh school"_

She loosens her grip. I snuggle back into the blankets, trying to ignore the galaxy exploding in my head. Ouch.

_"What the fuck-"_

_"You need to get out of here."_

_"Make me"_

_"If you don't leave willingly, we'll have to use force. Nurse, check his pupils for dilation, if they're too wide we may have a problem. You, get out of here now."_

Suddenly there's too much light and there's an open flame at my eye. I cry and grab out at it, but instead of a fire I knock at something hard and metallic and its lets out a wordless gasp of surprise. I grab out again to get the instrument of torture but a hand catches mine and it feels familiar so I cling onto it, some illogical part of my brain telling me that if I let go something terrible will happen, and then I grip it harder because there's that galaxy in my head again. Whimper at the pain.

"_Shh, it's okay."_

There's another hand touching me somewhere. My hair? My cheek? I think it's somewhere around my head. Can't tell which way is up or down, the only indication that I'm not actually made up of nothingness is the hand grabbing mine. Though, maybe stars have hands. Maybe stars explode into giant hands. I can't remember my star training properly, but I do know that this whole exploding business is lame.

"_Keep your fucking torch away from him. Abel, it's okay. It's okay. Look at me. Open your eyes."_

But it's not okay. I'm late for school and I forgot to do my homework on exploding because I think I'm doing it all wrong because it shouldn't hurt this much, should it?

I open my eyes.

And there's too much light again but this time I'm turning the Reliant around in terror because those are Colteron ships and they're trying to kill us and there's no one around that's still alive to help. I need to get us out of here before they kill us, and Cain is shouting but it doesn't make any sense so I fly towards the star because if it's blinding me then it'll blind the Colteron too and maybe we'll be safe.

"_We need help in here! If you're gonna stay then fucking help and hold him down!"_

"_I am, argh! Are you fucking blind?! Kind of hard to- shit, Abel calm the fuck down!"_

"_Nurse, I need some sedative"_

And then I see him, her, it, why am I worrying about gender again? The Colteron fighter aimed at us, no, aimed at Cain. And the world slips into a bottle of glue and everything slows down to a hault. I don't care if he'll never want me the way I want him. I won't let him die. I'll be damned if I let anyone die, especially not Cain.

"_There, that ought to do it. Christ, some navigator you've got there."_

In an emergency, they said, you'll know what to do; it'll be easier than breathing.

"_The best there is."_

They were right. Swinging the ship to get in the Colterons way was the easiest manoeuvre I'd ever made, considering it was going to kill me. And then I slammed launcher button and everything exploded sharply into darkness and breathing was the least of my problems.

"_Sure he isn't part fighter? When he came in, he was as good as dead. Still surprised he isn't."_

So I am dead. Or at least, I will be. But this, this is more like it, slow and painless and just like falling asleep. Cain's still holding my hand, breathing hard and steady. Well, if I'm going to die, might as well take one last look at something nice. I open my eyes, except only the right one goes and it's too heavy and the room spins so all I see is a whirl of dark hair and I panic because suddenly I'm not sure who's holding my hand at all. Cain never did. Never spoke about me that way.

"_Cain?"_

The world turns black.

**A/N – **apologies if anyone was offended by the gallery bit. Poor repressed Abel.


	3. Chapter 3

**Abel POV**

I must have been about 9 on our first field trip to the starship factory. Everyone was excited, a group of miniature people waiting to see where all that fantastic action happened, get a taste of the glory of being a hero.

Then we actually got there and everyone deflated because it was just a huge factory, with a production line of parts being put together. Here's a panel, here's another panel, here's a navigational orb. Put it all together and, ta dah! There's the closest you'll get to having wings, waiting for you to try them on. The others got bored fast, but I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen. Here's a chance to catch a star, here's a chance to _fly._

I suspect that's why this floating around isn't bothering me a whole lot. I guess wanting to feel weightless is hardwired into my DNA. Or maybe I'm just a magpie re-incarnated.

"_You're his fighter? You might want to sit down."_

"_Fuck you."_

"_...they told me you might say something like that."_

They didn't take us again after that until we were 17, a year away from being ready to join. By then, the others had better reasons to be disinterested. Rather live than risk their necks in a war. Not that I blamed them, I wanted to live too, just I couldn't quite see how that would be possible without protecting the people I love.

"_We took a scan of his brain, and it all seems to be in working order- except for here. See that shadow? That's bad news. I'm so sorry, but you're going to have to get a new navigator. He's not going to wake up anytime soon. We've sent the request to central already, you'll be back on duty in a couple of weeks."_

My parents didn't approve. My father especially. I bet he'd love to see me now, floating without anything to hold on to, bet he'd give me a smug grin and shout "I told you so!"

"_I said shut up, just SHUT UP-"_

I could be a doctor. A gardener. ANYTHING but join the star fleet. So I told them I was going to go and travel, packed my bags, said goodbye and went straight to training. My parents think I'm in India.

"_You need to calm down"_

"_The FUCK I do-"_

Then again, no energy gets created in the universe, and therefore none is destroyed. All of our energy, every vibration, wave of heat, every particle remains in the world. All the photons that ever bounced off our face, got sidetracked by our smile, touched our cheek – all those particles raced back off into the universe into someone else's view, charged their neurons, who charged another group of nuerons, and another, so that energy will continue to live on forever.

"_What's going on in here?"_

"_I dink he broke my node! Ngh..."_

And all the energy of our body heat will be flowing through the air with the warmth of another persons warmth, our life force continuing to sustain another in one of the most complex constellations of all.

"_Get out. You're banned from the medical bay. This misconduct will be reported to central. Get out of here now"_

Technically, we don't die. We just become quite disorderly. So I suppose, really, it wasn't that big of a lie.

Still, though. I would have liked a chance to ride an elephant while I was still all together.

**A/N – **And there's some science! Because SCIENCE! I've got two summer jobs right now, so this is probably it for a while. A hat tip to the ridiculous amount of support you've all been giving.


	4. Chapter 4

**Cain POV**

Three weeks of bullshit. Three weeks since Abel had his little episode and then went blank and refused to wake the fuck up, stubborn little bitch.

_"Cain?"_

Who else would it be, sweetheart? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. And there's that dick Praxis competing with me to spend the most time in medical, a fucking lightning bolt out of the mess hall after each meal before patrol or training. And Deimos following me around like a lost puppy filled with pent up sexual frustration that's apparently lacking understanding in the meaning of the word no, whether it's pushed up against a wall with a hand against his throat or not.

And then there's Abel. Abel, who just lays there and doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes, doesn't do shit. So tempted to shine another torch in his face and see if he flips out again, just to get a reaction out of him that isn't this comat-. This com-.

_"Stop shaking him, moron!"_

All my fault.

Abel's stupid fucking medic and nurses throwing around words I don't understand, like I ever got past 10th grade. Guess they think Abel's education somehow filtered through to me via osmosis or something, I don't know.

"_See that shadow? That's bad news. I'm so sorry, but you're going to have to get a new navigator."_

Worst of all is how cold Abel is. When I asked the medic what it meant, he started throwing some textbook crap around the room until I shut him up with a well aimed punch, which got me thrown out of the room _again_. When I came back Abel's hand was so cold I got a little dizzy because that was it, he was gone, but then I felt the pulse and everything came back into focus. Just sleeping. Not dead.

"Cain."

What now? Just want a fucking smoke before I have to go back into that tiny room and try to hide the shaking in my hands from everyone while they hook him up to another machine or put another blanket on, or worse, get out the brain scans again and try to explain to me that Sleeping Beauty was never just a fairytale. That I have a new navigator now and maybe I should go to the psych centre and _talk about it_.

The new navigator is blonde and tiny, just like Abel and every other navigator in this flying shit hole. Flies well enough. Hasn't gotten us killed yet, so that's something. The last assignment we went on he weaved in and out of the formation, directing me to blow things up, and that's what I did because that's all I'm good for, and everyone congratulated us for killing the most. But when we got back to the room and he climbed onto his bunk to get changed, chatting about fuck knows what, I had to get out of there because he was too much like Abel, and not like Abel enough.

Screw that, I don't need anyone to speak to. Abel will wake up. He fucking better.

Praxis comes up next to me but stands back a little, keeps a bit of distance. Good. I hear him rustle through his pockets and the tell tale click and hiss of a lighter. Each time reminds me of my father lighting one up that night before he died, walking out the front door in the heat of a summer night, a bright flame before darkness swallowed him up and didn't relinquish it's embrace. Maybe that's why I'm addicted, waiting forever for him to come back, trying to hold onto an impossible spark. A hiss and flicker to substitute the man who raised me. Addicted to a dream.

"Cain," and here we go, fucking cyclops with all his feelings worse than Abel on his period.

If I ignore him, maybe he'll go away.

"Look, I don't care if you don't like me. But Abel wouldn't want you to be doing this to yourself. You need to talk to someone, and... "

If I punch his face in then maybe he'll go away too.

"...well, I owe him."

I feel him step closer to me, hesitating like he wants to comfort me somehow like I need it, so I spin around and... freeze. Praxis is covered in blood, his hand is outstretched and clawing at the air, searching for an invisible rope to hang on to. What? Shit. _Shit. _The fuck is this. I reach forwards to steady him, and he slumps backwards dragging me down with him, his face inches from mine, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water making some horrible fucking rasping noise and gasping for air, more blood pulsing from his head in time with a heartbeat.

Except he's got two eyes instead of one, and the red stands out against his hair because it's pale and blonde and it's not Praxis at all. I try and stem the blood flow, try to grab Abel up because medical isn't too far away except something is stopping me and I realise we're back in the middle of space, back on the fucking Reliant, back in the blinding light and I try and steer the ship but I can't see anything because the dashboard is covered with blood-

And suddenly I'm in the medical bay. Just a dream, just a dream, just a stupid dream. I take a couple of breaths like I learned in basic when the nightmares threatened to take over reality, dripping sweat on my lap.

A hand brushes against mine, warm and familiar.

And there's Abel, eyes wide, looking at me all confused. Closes his eyes, and I go to grab his shoulders and shake them back open again, but he doesn't need my help: just blinking.

Followed by an inhale, a fit of coughing. Some part in the back of my head tells me to get some water, but I can't think clearly with the room tilting at this angle, struggling to hold myself up, waiting to wake up again and wishing this was real_._

And again with the inhaling.

"Cain?"

There's something messing with my vision, and I realise it wasn't sweat after all.

**A/N** Cain, did you just... not suck at feelings? I know, I know, I said no more for a while but insomnia is insomnia and parties don't help. I'm half asleep/drunk so I hope this makes sense.


	5. Chapter 5

**Abel POV**

There's something strange about going home for the first time in years, or just going home at all after something big happens that changes you. Inside, you feel different, you're a different person to the one that left. And yet everything looks exactly the same. The door to your parents house is the same, white paint, fancy door knob. The garden's gotten a little out of hand so they must be away. Or maybe they've disassembled back into billions of atoms. I wouldn't know.

But there's nothing stranger than going home with Cain holding your hand.

I don't know why... when I asked, he mumbled something about "you trip fucking everywhere", which is true after the crash. Apparently, sometimes when a bullet rips through your head it'll leave a shadow in just the right spot and your sense of equilibrium is in darkness for the rest of your life. But at least I can still see the stars, even if they're miles away now, once again the intangible dreams of a boy.

Honourable discharge for me. Cain finally reached the end of his service, though I get the feeling someone pushed for it early. That's why you shouldn't punch your commanding officer in the face, kids.

I wasn't expecting him to come back with me, thought he'd try to re-enlist with the new navigator once they deemed me good as dead or go back to the colonies, but he's been acting weird since I woke up to him teary eyed and panting in the medical bay. Must have been some nightmare, though I never thought anything could frighten him. And now he keeps glancing at me sideways and holding my hand like he's afraid I'm going to make a run for it, keeps going to kiss me without pushing for anything else and it's weird. I keep waiting for him to snap out of it, waiting to be shoved against a wall sometime, scar bitten back open and left alone bleeding while he runs off to fight something, but it hasn't happened yet.

I wonder if my parents will notice it. Cain's staring at me again. Suppose he thinks he's the only person in the world with peripheral vision.

We walk up the steps to the door, badges tinkling against my uniform. You get a few badges for almost dying in the star fleet. Get more if you actually do.

I ring the doorbell, but no one's home, so I let myself in with the house key, the one thing I held onto, turned over in my hands at night when I couldn't sleep. The door jams a little and the familiarity of it is overwhelming.

"Hello?"

We stand in the hallway, Cain breathing steady next to my ear. On the table in there's a stack of letters in my handwriting talking about elephants and spices and a country I've never been to and mountains that I'll never climb. There's a framed photo of me with a back pack and walking shoes, smiling and waving on the day I left with a trail of lies in my wake like Hansel and Gretel. Only difference is that the Colterons are much more sinister than a witch with a taste for children, and when I left I didn't really think I'd come back outside a wooden box.

Wander about the house a bit, trying to show him around – kitchen, living room, laundry – there's a painting I did when I was five - when all I really want to do is curl up on the ground and forget about everything except the feeling of the floorboards beneath me, forget about my parents, about the star fleet, about floating for three weeks with nothing but darkness for company. Forget about what's wrong with my head. Forget that I can't walk anymore without needing to stop every five minutes so the room stops tilting crazily, that I'm leaning heavily against the railing halfway up the stairs trying not to retch from the spinning in my head and Cain is scowling at the ground with his hands clenched, angry about something, hand on my shoulder but miles away.

Moses is curled up on my bed and looks up when we come into the room. Blinks at me sleepily, yawns at Cain and turns his head away. Hasn't changed, though cats rarely do.

I sit down next to him and place a hand on his body, feel the flutter of his heartbeat, the thrumming of his purrs, softness of his fur. He's thinner. Older. Frailer than than I recall and I'm reminded that nothing is permanent. Moves his face to lick my hand with a rough tongue and keeps it there, breathing warm into to my fingers.

I can hear someone sniffling, but when I turn to Cain and see his face dry and looking like he doesn't know what to do, I realise it's me.

"Hey, princess..."

He doesn't finish the sentence. Just reaches for my hand and holds it too tight. When I rest my head on his shoulder, he places his on top of mine, and I think that maybe this is better than flying and right now that's enough.

**A/N - ** Curse you insomnia! I think I've developed a slight addiction to writing this... well, that's all folks, this is finished. See you around!


End file.
